"Last night I dreamed that I was eating a giant marshmallow, and when I woke up, my pillow was gone!"

Simply put: a character thinks they are eating a giant marshmallow (Sometimes something else) when in fact they are still in bed, sound asleep and dreaming while chewing on their pillow. This is a staple dream type found in comics and animation. It does not always require marshmallows in the dream sequence, but does require a pillow in the dreamer's bed. Upon awakening from a marshmallow dream, said dreamer will find the pillow to be missing or shredded. The dreamer's mouth is usually infested with feathers that were once stuffed in the pillow.

The lower the dreamer's intelligence, the more likely this is to happen, and the less need for there to be an actual marshmallow in the dream. Big Eaters are, of course, prone to this trope as well.

Motto To Love Ru has a variation. When Mikan crawls into Rito's bed to catch one of the other girls in the act of crawling into his bed while he's sleeping, he grabs her in his sleep and his mumblings hint that he is acting like he's grabbed the 'marshmallow'. When she pinches his cheek to have him release her, his response is to claim that the 'marshmallow bit him'. Neither the pillow or Mikan is harmed when they wake (although Mikan is 'caught' by the one she was trying to catch).

In Rokujyouma no Shinryakusha!?, Satomi grabs Ruth in his sleep, dreaming about climbing a tree to catch a beetle. Ruth gets so upset (about him dreaming her as a tree rather than any inappropriate contact) over this that she develops an unreasoning hatred of Rhinoceros Beetles, despite not knowing what one looks like until later.

Comic Books

On one cover of Simpsons Comics, Homer is seen eating his pillow while dreaming of eating a pizza.

Sonic gave a little nudge. Silver's left foot lost traction, as his right went sliding over Sonic's far shoulder. His rear end landed quite squarely on Sonic's chest, with his back towards Sonic's feet, and his front towards his pillow. That put something important right in front of Sonic's face.

And the next morning:

"I don't know about you guys, but I had a wonderful dream last night..." He turned back to the bed. "It was like being inside a giant ball of cotton candy, only it wasn't all sugary. And talk about soft...ummm...are you two quite all right?"

The Pony Earthverse has turned this into a running gag; whenever characters talk with their ponies for the first time, they end up with a pillow in their mouth.

Carol: Last night, I dreamt I was eating a giant marshmallow, and when I woke up my boyfriend was gone. Man: I don't get it. Carol: It's not a joke.

Played straight in an episode of After ShowGolden Palace, when Chuy — under the guise of "Corny Castillos" — plans on putting this exact joke in his act for the hotel talent show.

Conversed (in a hoedown!) by Colin Mochrie in the UK Whose Line Is It Anyway?. When he has to sing about his worst nightmare, he tells about eating cotton candy and it ends with him waking up with the pillow gone.

Calvin and Hobbes had this as a minor Running Gag. Hobbes would be having a dream about being in a vicious fight with a ferocious weasel...only to awaken and discover that he had really been ripping his pillow to shreds. Or, occasionally, Calvin.

Dilbert once referenced this. Wally had a strange dream about getting smarter by willing it so, with his forehead expanding to match, but still woke up with his pillow missing. As Dilbert comments,

Skin Horse combines this with Real Dreams Are Weirderhere; Unity responds to the Abbess's description of her prophetic dream with an inversion of the trope ("...and when I woke up, all the marshmallows were gone!")

In the Busybee Comics series Womble, one comic has the Duchess telling the Womble about a succession of strange dreams, after each of which she awoke to discover her pillow was gone. The comic ends with the Womble lounging on a pile of stolen pillows.

In the episode "Suds SpongeBob dreams of eating Krabby Patties and wakes up chewing on his pillow.

Also referred to on "Sleepy Time". When SpongeBob meets Gary in the dreamworld, the now erudite Gary tries to explain to him the concept of dreams as a view to another world. When an Emily Dickinson poem goes over SB's head, Gary recites one more his speed:

There once was an old man from Peru Who dreamed he was eating his shoe He woke with a fright In the middle of the night To find that his dream had come true.

In The Fairly OddParents, Chester wakes up eating his pillow, says "You're not the giant marshmallow. Oh well!" and continues eating.

In an Animaniacs short, that one kid comes out of his house and says "One time, OK, see, one time Randy Beaman's mom had a dream that she ate a big marshmallow and it was really good, and she, and when she woke up...her pillow was gone. 'Cause she ate it. 'K, bye."

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy